BTA Meeting Minutes » February 2007
A copy of the BTA Meeting Minutes for February in PDF format can be downloaded by clicking on February 2007 Minutes. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the file.
Minutes for BTA Meeting Held February 20, 2007
Meeting called to order at 3:43 on 2/20/07 by Sue Gibbs.
Motion to accept the minutes as distributed was accepted.
CeCe spoke about SCMPA (Solano County Medical Benefits Plan Association). She distributed a chart with the comparison of HMO benefits.
Vacaville withdrew from SCMPA. This will result in at least a 15% raise in rates over the $461 BTA members now spend per month per person for Health Net because there are now less than 1000 people in the Solano schools group. CeCe will be investigating other possible benefits group. She is also trying to get Kaiser to negotiate with all Solano school groups collectively, because they now treat us as individual groups, which means higher rates. Many of the trusts will not take us because BUSD pays in-lieu to people who do not get insurance coverage.
Health care legislation is coming up, and CTA will be supporting some national healthcare measures. Deborah Campbell said that E-mail support of these measures would be a way to have our voice heard. Carleen Maselli suggested getting personal e-mail addresses to get this information to teachers.
CeCe would like a committee to form to look into the insurance issue. This is something we need to become advocates on. The healthcare insurance coverage is a bargaining issue that should be negotiated in our contract. Deborah Campbell and CeCe will meet to discuss this further.
Kathy Maloney stated that the checking account has $2,875.20, and with CD’s that brings it to $20,752.38.
Deborah Campbell will have an executive board committee meeting to discuss CTA dues and possible increases in local association dues.
Deborah Casey reported that BTA “sunshine” their contract reopeners. Articles opened, as indicated by survey response were: wages, hours, benefits, leaves, class size, evaluations, compliance, credentialing language, organizational security, the calendar, duration of the contract, and the signing-off page. Some of articles need contract language cleaned up. Proposals are being finalized, and cannot be discussed until after the meeting with the District. Janice Adams, Rosie Switzer and Mrs. Samiljan will be on the District bargaining team. Carleen Maselli, Deborah Casey, Barry Wofsy, Deborah Campbell, and Yvette Lopez are BTA’s bargaining representatives. GENESEA language is been added (the new Special Education IEP computer program necessitating much more work). Loading and weighting of SpEd classes is being discussed. Special Ed teachers will meet to go over this language.
Nan Prolo, Lauren Sulga and Kim Hicks are BTA members of the Calendar Committee. The official district members are JoAnn Severson and Susan Sullivan. Nan will discuss calendar issues with the union prior to this committee meeting.
The District would like to look at extending the Kindergarten school day. We can bargain this implementation. The District would also like to decrease class size at 4th and 5th grades.
Grievance Chair, Carleen Maselli, stated there is a proctoring grievance at the high school, because teachers were asked to show up on their lunch hour to have a CAHSEE proctoring meeting. The administration has responded informally, and has said they will have these meetings at regularly scheduled staff meetings from now on, and will tell teachers attendance and proctoring during prep period.
Deborah Campbell stated BTA’s membership records must be updated. Vera McGiffert at Vallejo Teachers Association will reconcile our records, and will train Angela. Deborah would like to offer $500 to Vera as a consultant to update these records. Kathy Maloney moved to hire Vera to do this. Motion passed.
PAR committee report by Sue Gibbs: The PAR committee was audited. PAR funding could be lined up with an overall plan for specific types of training for teachers who use funds to go to in-services. This could include all teachers, whatever they teach, using an overall district focus for improvement. For example, technology could apply to all teachers. This is using Title 2 money.
For teachers to get PAR funding the deadlines are:
April 1st for end of the school year in-services.
June 1st for summer in-services.
Renata Black and Diane Danska from Henderson attended a CTA conference for special education students. Special Education students were placed in their room without either receiving training or enough information to effectively teach the students. So these two Henderson teachers went to this conference and learned about IDEA, legal issues in the general education classroom, teacher rights, behavior management, accommodations and modifications. Special Ed funds should be available for general education teacher resources. Students are being included in general education classes without the input or training of general education teachers. It is BTA’s hope that the training these teachers attended will be part of BTA’s buy-back days next year.
New Business:
Carleen: CTA state council report. Merit pay may be coming. Denver teachers started this, and have seen decreases in pay. CTA wants their own model of merit pay before someone else comes in with theirs.
Deborah Campbell stated that as part of NCLB, highly qualified teacher status may be evaluated. NEA web page has this issue. E-mail your CTA representatives to speak out against this.
Deborah Campbell says that we have settled the uniform salary complaint. A memo will go out to the membership on Wednesday. Back pay will be paid for this year, and teachers will also receive pay for two prior years.
Teresa Badger and Dr. Roberto Gibral-Tarik will attend the CTA Human Rights Conference on the March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Dr. Gibral-Tarik has volunteered to be BTA’s Human Rights Contact. BTA still needs a Woman’s Issues Contact.
The Napa Solano RRC will host the annual Educators’ Concerns Conference. Deborah Campbell and others attend. There was a motion on the floor to pay $100 to reimburse these attendees. Motion passed.
The BTA web page is in progress.
Suzanne Huddleston has coupons for office supplies for Office Max.
Meeting ended at 5:20 pm.
The next meeting will be held on March 20th, at 3:30 in the back room of Round Table Pizza.
A copy of the BTA Meeting Minutes for February in PDF format can be downloaded by clicking on February 2007 Minutes. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the file.